Our client hired us to create a multi-language website highlighting over 28 different accounting and legal services. The challenge for us is to manage translation and dynamic pages in English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Also, as an add-on to web development, our client requested the ability to manage and update content on their own. With that in mind, we built the site with a Content Management System (CMS).

Do you have help in your branding or marketing initiatives? Contact us and see how we can help. Don’t forget to visit our free marketing training page to learn more about inbound and social marketing for free.

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Our client wanted us to create a unique brand identity for the lodge highlighting the actual shape of the Boat House and the Chinese calligraphy of the lodge’s name – 船屋. We worked closely with our client throughout the concept development process and we are excited to showcase this final design.

Do you need help in your branding or marketing initiatives? Contact us and see how we can help. Don’t forget to visit our free marketing training page to learn more about inbound and social marketing for free.

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Create your Google+ Page

https://plus.google.com/pages/create

As you can see below, our Google+ page looks very similar to an individual profile. Google added a square icon right next to the page name to separate it from individual profile. Join our circle on Google+ now!

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The key to succeed in Chinese markets is to have a deep understanding of the local market and culture. As Liu mentions in the video, Jiepang deploys different strategies for different provinces in China and Hong Kong. What works in one province may not work in another one. Also, Jiepang took advantage of local acceptance to coupons and enabled users to redeem coupons with badges collected with check-ins. This is something I think will work in the U.S. as well, and Foursquare should consider adding this feature to future releases.

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Social Media Goals

1. Site traffic and ranking
2. Press coverage
3. Recruitment
4. Research
5. Product sales
6. Lead generation
7. Brand awareness
8. Email list building
9. Customer insights
10. Customer Relationship

Social Media Measurements

1. Number of fans and followers
2. Number of comments
3. Number of clicks
4. Conversion rate
5. Engagement
6. Site traffic
7. Number of staff responses
8. Media coverage
9. Number of re-tweets or comments
10. Number of qualified leads

It’s important to have goals and measurements in place to evaluate whether your social media marketing is effective for your organization.  Social media marketing can help you influence, communicate and interact with your prospects and customers. However, not all tactics work for every organization.  With measurement metrics in place, you will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your tactics and revise your marketing and social media plan accordingly. Lastly, make sure you align your social media marketing goals and measurements to your business goals.

[Image Credit:  Hootsuite]

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is critical when it comes to content marketing strategy development. Creating content with the consumer’s goals in mind (e.g. researching vendors, finding Solutions, evaluating products, narrowing field) guides you to the right direction in creating content that can ultimately satisfy your business goals.

Turn Your Blog Into Valuable Sales Support and Reference Tools

If you have already developed great content, check out my guest blog post for the Inbound Marketing University on How to Turn Your Blog Into Valuable Sales Support and Reference Tools. In this guest post, I offer tips to maximize your existing content for sales and customer service support.

Check out the inforgraphics below to learn more about how content marketing works in the purchase cycle. This helpful reference tool is great for any marketing professional who utilizes content strategy to accomplish their business goals.

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By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I have been a big fan of Thomas Crampton’s blog on social media in China and the emerging Asian markets. Ogilvy’s China social media team came up with the following great infographic comparing the US and China’s social media platforms.

Take into account this may be what’s currently relevant, but no doubt new platforms will either enter or replace various platforms included in this infographic. I am very interested in finding out how the digital space is going to evolve in Asia and I believe China will dominate some of the most innovative social networks in the future.

As a Hong Kong native, I’m also curious to see if there’s any social media equivalent chart tailored to the Hong Kong markets.

[Image: Thomas Crampton]

By Samuel Hon | Follow @HONMarketing | LinkedIn | Contact
Samuel is an award-winning marketing director, digital and social media strategist, brand consultant and designer. His interests include global culture, advertising, marketing trends and technology. Samuel, a Hong Kong native, is an honors graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Now by aging, I’m not referring to our hippie parents, but more our beatnik gen grandparents. The children and beneficiaries of an aging parent are an important group to market to in an aging demography. This has become increasingly common in the health care industry and how to effectively reach this group has not been fully explored. In coming years, this change will have a significant impact on the way marketers evaluate their target market.

For the technically suave octogenarians, you can build the same social networking format as you would for a younger adult but, knowing your target audience is imperative. The marketing message and content needs to be clear, concise and delivered in an easy to understand format. The appropriation of font size, color schemes and less visual distractions communicate the importance of understanding your older demography.

There are still markets to be tapped in the world of health care. Apple’s iPad has the capability of building applications suitable for individuals with vision impairments via their zoom technology. It could even go as far as the iPad having an application for Medicare.

Having an application that tells you exactly when open enrollment begins, what is the current Medicare co-payment and how long does Medicare cover my stay in a hospital is ease of access for virtually anyone. Almost 50 million Americans can choose to stay in original Medicare or change plans within the Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D Prescription Drug programs during open enrollment. Many Americans also have other plans which may overlap in which coordination of those benefits may need to be addressed.

Guest Post By Terence Kelley | Follow Terence’s Blog
Terence has over 6 years of experience in the managed care and health care marketing industry. He has been project lead on contract writing, requests for proposals, policy issue papers and “grass-roots marketing campaigns” for large non-profit programs.

1. QR Codes on Websites

This is a big no-no! The point of the QR Code is to get people to scan them and lead them to a special, mobile-optimized website. What use is there for taking someone already visiting your website, to a mobile website? This also goes for social media- There is NO good in using your QR codes as default photos in your social media profiles- no one will scan them (especially since social media is becoming increasingly mobile.) Your potential customers are not walking around with 2 smart phones.

2. TMI – Too Much Information

Keep the content of your QR Code to a simple website URL, a small line of text, a small text message, or, if used as a V Card- just give them your name, phone and e-mail. The more data your QR code contains, the larger, more complex the code will be. This will in turn lead to a lower scan-rate. How many times do you expect your potential customer to attempt to scan your code? If the answer is more than 1, you’re wrong.

3. Going Home

Your QR Code should NOT take people to the home page of your website. Why? Marketing is about targeted, specific campaigns. A good QR code is custom designed to match whatever it is being printed on, and leads to a mobile friendly page with specific information. If you print a QR code on a flyer for a house you are selling, the scanned QR code should lead to the listing of that property, not your home page. Common Sense!

4. Bigger is Better

To ensure your code scans effortlessly, it needs to be minimum 1″x1″ with a 1cm white border around it. Why? Because the marketing gurus say so. Also, your code can’t be too large- If you are using a QR code on a large size banner that will be placed near people, size it accordingly- it needs to easily fit in the frame of your potential customer’s mobile phone cameras. If the banner is going to be hung far away from people, adjust the size so that it is large enough to appear clear, but small enough to fit within the camera’s frame.

5. Disappearing Act

If using a QR Code on a television commercial, run the QR code in a corner of the screen for the entire length of the ad. If you briefly show your code at the end of the commercial, you lose. No one is going to care enough to “pause” the commercial (assuming your potential customer is even using a DVR). Avoid wasting your investment, run the QR code as long as possible on a TV commercial.

Guest Post By Demetri Gregorakis| Follow @dgregorakis | Blog
Demetri is a web strategist  and I.T. consultant based in Sacramento, California. He has experience in developing websites as well as internal social networks for businesses.

The evolution of health care and marketing are dramatically changing with the emphasis on social media in today’s climate. With the largest population in the U.S. significantly aging, the trend must focus on marketing to a consumer that is not only jaundiced to change but, also limited in their experience with social media.

What is the industry and who is their target audience? In the health care marketing industry there are a number of health care providers looking to do business with insurance policy holders and the alike i.e. private practices, physician groups, hospitals, assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

Marketing can be just as unpredictable as the mediums to choose from for a specific demography. When analyzing your marketing medium and deciding to market to the elderly, typically choices have been limited to direct mail, specific lead generation parameters, television and radio advertising. With the emphasis on social media the Internet has proven to be effective tool, yet what about introducing something more along the lines of Facebook or other social networking sites?

Social networking can be a challenging and unsolicited medium for elderly individuals, but certainly not impossible. There are social networking tools out there geared towards a relatively new untapped group to target, any guesses? Well, it’s as simple as the children of these individuals.

Children are the key. For example, many insurance companies are beginning to promote social networking sites that allow the children to effectively manage their parentals healthcare affairs. These sites include assessing your parent’s cognitive functionality, choosing providers and a myriad of services that can make the experience of taking care of a loved one, easier.

As the age of information and health care continues to evolve, understanding your demography is guaranteed effective. Leave it to the marketers to engage a “grass roots” campaign for the elderly as this will be the generation that will impact every marketer’s job in years to come.

Guest Post By Terence Kelley | Follow Terence’s Blog
Terence has over 6 years of experience in the managed care and health care marketing industry. He has been project lead on contract writing, requests for proposals, policy issue papers and “grass-roots marketing campaigns” for large non-profit programs.